El King, the multi disciplinarian
WORDS: REBECCA BLAND
IMAGES: HONOR ELLIOTT/EL KING & FAMILY
Crocheter, former junior national road champion and proud Welsh speaker, Eluned ‘El’ King is not only majorly accomplished on the bike, but an intriguing person off it as well. The 20-year-old lives in Manchester for most of the year in a house with her Great Britain Senior Academy teammates, although Swansea is her home and where her family live, including her miniature dachshund, Oli.
“He’s four years old, but he looks like a puppy so everyone always thinks he’s the runt of the litter, really small. He’s got a right attitude. He’s cute, but definitely a bit strange. He’s just so small but runs the house and lets you know he’s there. He’s really stubborn, and he’s my parents’ favourite child. My dad was absolutely totally against getting him, and now they’re best friends and he basically just sits on his lap all day while he’s doing work.”
El counts her family as a “tight-knit unit”, and she is one of four siblings. It was her older brother and sister that introduced her to cycling.
“My older sister and brother cycled at the local club and it was really near where my grandparents lived so being the middle child, whatever they were doing I needed to do as well. So I went along and it turns out I’m really competitive about everything.”
Her competitiveness is only part of what makes El the rider she is today. In her own words, she’s “intrinsically motivated”, and just loves to ride her bike. At 20 years old, she’s still developing as a rider and is keen to not label herself just yet.
“This year we’ve been conscious not to put any labels on it, but I think in the back of my head I’d say I’m more of a puncheur. I’m quite fast, but not the fastest – I climb well, but not with the pure climbers. I’m good at your classic Flanders climbs, 1-2km long. But this year’s been about development and just racing every different type of race and then maybe I’ll be able to zone in on what I want to become, or what kind of rider I see myself becoming in the next few years.”
Her season of trying everything has seen her race abroad in Europe in some of the toughest spring races, and at home, in the UK for some circuit racing which helped to boost her confidence for the remainder of the season. She enjoyed success at the Welsh circuit championships, lapping the entire field and then winning a sprint against second place.
“I got into the sport through cyclocross, so circuit racing is a very similar one hour effort. I’d spent the whole spring in Belgium getting my head kicked in by, like. Kasia Niewiadoma at the highest level of the sport, so I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll race in the UK to remind myself that I am a good bike rider’.
“The year before I’d only raced in the UK, so I was just interested to see how I’d developed in that year. Not just results wise, but the feeling in the race. And actually it made a massive difference to the second part of my season, just having that confidence again to be like, ‘you are in a good place, you just have to remember that you’re in a good place’.”
El also managed to double up on her Otley GP win from 2021 and win the famous Ilkley GP, a course that is not typically fast and flat like many other circuit races.
“I remember coming off after Ilkley and being like ‘oof’, and we were all like, ‘that was quite hard, that race’...and nobody wanted to say it but we were all probably full gas all day.”
Off the bike, El is a proud Welshwoman, and is a Welsh speaker, something she says is a big part of her identity and how she views herself, “not just being a Welsh speaker but being Welsh in general.”
In her downtime she enjoys mind-calming activities like sudoku and crocheting – she’s even got a Harry Styles cardigan on the go, but admits it might be 2024 when she finally gets round to finishing it.
“It’s something so I can switch off my brain for a couple of hours. I don’t really have any major projects at the moment but I guess I really enjoy repeating a pattern. I also do a lot of sudoku, the girls on the team always find it funny that I’ve got a sudoku book with me when we’re at the races, or travelling to races.”
But when she’s not making cardigans or puzzling away, she’s a massive fan of comedy, including shows like Would I Lie To You, and Taskmaster.
“Me and my dad watch it together, it’s such a good series. On the fridge at home, I made my dad a list of Taskmaster series, like the best and the worst. So when he’s bored he’ll put on random series that I’ve rated for him, and then text me about it.”
It’s clear that El is keen to keep a healthy balance between El the athlete and El the daughter, friend and sister, and at just 20 years old she possesses a level of maturity beyond her years. The next few years will be exciting for her development on both the track and the road, as she works to find out what kind of rider she really is, and maybe even finish that cardigan.